And you base this conclusion on which figures? I live in a country with close to the best infrastructure in the world and I don't know anybody who watched multiple simultaneous streams in their household. And I'm an IT profesional, my wife makes movies, so our friends/colleagues certainly are tech minded.

When you get them, you will understand why people care about multiple simultaneous streams. That way my GF can watch "Glee" in the living room, and I can go in the bedroom and watch something that doesn't suck.

My internet provider is also my cably tv provider. They set up a nice way to stream regular tv from their website. So if a few people in my household want to watch something different from their phones or tablets or desktop computers, it's possible. Necessary? No. It's more a thing of comfort. Downloading a game, movie, and/or a big update won't make an hd stream stutter, nor will your skype call drop.

It handles everything you and your household throws at it, and that is a much bigger benefit than it sounds.

When you get them, you will understand why people care about multiple simultaneous streams. That way my GF can watch "Glee" in the living room, and I can go in the bedroom and watch something that doesn't suck.

I'm afraid we will never do that considering me and the missus rarely watch TV. Even the children watch dvd's not television. I truly despise commercials around children programs, so I just buy complete children series on DVD/Bluray. But yes, I get the point for the average user. I always forget that usage in the USA is much more pay per view centered and rthus streaming services are accepted territory.

When they tried to shut soccer behind a paywall we got questions in our congress

And you base this conclusion on which figures? I live in a country with close to the best infrastructure in the world and I don't know anybody who watched multiple simultaneous streams in their household. And I'm an IT profesional, my wife makes movies, so our friends/colleagues certainly are tech minded.

Yeah, everybody torrents... I guess that's the big ticket?

I don't torrent. (Not that I never have; my livelihood depends on copyright, and I make enough money to pAy for TV, movies and music).

I doubt torrenting is going to disrupt video until the process of getting a high res video onto your TV is much easier. Between getting the right playback device, having the right video container for it, etc, the mass market isn't going to get involved with all that hassle.

I doubt torrenting is going to disrupt video until the process of getting a high res video onto your TV is much easier. Between getting the right playback device, having the right video container for it, etc, the mass market isn't going to get involved with all that hassle.

Good point, but that still leaves customers in a position where watching content takes more steps than just turning the TV on; I think video piracy would have to hit Netflix levels of convenience to really scare content companies.

But I'm not gonna dodge, you're absolutely right that AirPlay makes the entire experience easier.

Yeah they are, it's early but there are bits of it in the wild now: you can use the Netflix smartphone app to control the PS3 app, so long as they're both on the same Wifi network. It's nice and seamless so far.

I saw that and thought "I wonder which idiot will link this as proof of something"...I have my answer. Please for the love of god explain to me how that applies to CONSUMERS in the least. You know, those consumers who are on 100Mbs network inside thier house at best, and a whole fuckload is slower than that with wireless?

Everything above a 10mb home network is for the average user pretty much unnoticeable*.

50 Mbit internet costs €30 here, which is therefore a pretty average connection. I bet many people would notice a slowdown to just 10 Mbit.

Just signed up for 50Mbit myself, had it installed on Sunday and its damn nice.

Anybody arguing over 10mbit is fucking clueless. People will take advantage of >10mbit soon after they have access to >10mbit.

I would love some proof of this statement. I have had 20Mb for about 2 weeks and no one in the family can tell a difference. (I got the 20Mb at the 10Mb price for a year. In a year I will drop back to 10Mb to save the $5/month). It isn't even worth $5 (25%) for 2x the speed.

Really? It's substantially slower with wireless? I was getting 47.9 Mbit over my wireless when pulling files. It wasn't maxed out by the wireless, but rather by my Internet link.

Seriously, some of you guys have to crawl out of the dark ages and realize what's possible without effort.

Yes, really. Not for YOU--but then I wasn't speaking about YOU! I didn't all-caps "consumers" with you in mind. Seriously, go to your average consumer house and measure their wireless. First off, tons won't even be on 802.11n but rather probably 11g. And even then probably configured poorly, PLUS they have it on one side of the house and are connecting on the far opposite side of the house and all of that combined probably get about 10Mb, if that. Go meet some average poeple who don't know dick about computers and see what their speeds are.

Really? It's substantially slower with wireless? I was getting 47.9 Mbit over my wireless when pulling files. It wasn't maxed out by the wireless, but rather by my Internet link.

Seriously, some of you guys have to crawl out of the dark ages and realize what's possible without effort.

Yes, really. Not for YOU--but then I wasn't speaking about YOU! I didn't all-caps "consumers" with you in mind. Seriously, go to your average consumer house and measure their wireless. First off, tons won't even be on 802.11n but rather probably 11g. And even then probably configured poorly, PLUS they have it on one side of the house and are connecting on the far opposite side of the house and all of that combined probably get about 10Mb, if that. Go meet some average poeple who don't know dick about computers and see what their speeds are.

Yeps. the users speaking up in here are not proof of anything.

We have a 1 GB network here at home with a Nas, HTPC, several laptops, two render workstations. And I have 20 MB internet. But I'm not the norm.

And again, even with the use case of having multiple streams nobody here has shown me what the average user gains here. The average user most likely isn't able to set up a multi streaming system.

I'm not saying extra speed isn't nice... nor do I say I will be stuck on this speed forever. But I do know that for most use cases a lowly 10MB network is still enough. It's when you enter the realm of airplay, Plex, Xbmc, Hulu, Netflix that these things start to matter (and even then it remains to be seen how many netflix users need multiple streams).

Netflix has a BIG userbase. 25 million. Thats probably ±20% of all households. That means 80% do not use Netflix, arguably the biggest service out there.

So where's the reason for the OMG you guys are crazy when EH2 and I say that most households don't need more than 10MB? Why is this so controversial?

So let me reiterate. The notion that people don't need more than 10MB now is wrong because of internet tv in the future? Thanks for playing

My ISP recently upgraded me from 10MB to 20MB for free, without telling me. Everything is faster, and I noticed within 30 minutes. I'm happy. I'm sure precisely 0% of punters in my area will be calling Virgin Media and demanding that all this unnecessary bandwidth be taken away.

How would you know how many do? And why would you expect takeup of a range of service levels not to follow a normal-ish distribution curve? Which moves up as faster tiers appear, and as costs at a given level reduce ...

Too bad that high bandwidth services develop slowly when big parts of the world are lagging behind. And when there are few services requiring faster connections, people will be slow to upgrade. Etcetera etcetera.

I can't believe that people visiting a tech forum really believe that something is ever fast enough.

I also can't believe how slow this all develops. 20+ Mbit has been cheaper than €30 in my country for the last 8 years. 8 years later this gets you only two or three times higher speeds.

I also can't believe how slow this all develops. 20+ Mbit has been cheaper than €30 in my country for the last 8 years. 8 years later this gets you only two or three times higher speeds.

Thank you for fully agreeing with EH2 and me and making our point

The reason is demand. If demand was higher we would have glass everywhere. Ihat we don't is telling us something... the technology for faster speeds is to expensive to be commercially worthwhile.

And once again I have to shake my head on why saying the average user currently doesn't need much higher speeds is somehow revoking my tech credits.

I have a HUGE shocker for you. Did you notice that the CPU lifecycle (especially for businesses, but also for consumers) has lengthened considerably? Seems the world works a bitdifferent than you thought... there is an end to marginal gains, there needs to be a valid use case or else people will stop paying. A lower price makes the treshold much lower, thats for sure. And yeah for the same money faster is better, nobody is denying that.

Read what I say instead of putting words in my mouth. If you want to attack me that the use-case for average users is crystal clear, go ahead. In fact the netflix case clearly shows that the usecase in the USA is much better than in Europe where pay per view services just don't seem to be abel to take of. But don't try to pin things on me I never said.

And you base this conclusion on which figures? I live in a country with close to the best infrastructure in the world and I don't know anybody who watched multiple simultaneous streams in their household. And I'm an IT profesional, my wife makes movies, so our friends/colleagues certainly are tech minded.

Yeah, everybody torrents... I guess that's the big ticket?

I watch the football games on the living room TV over internet, kids watch Netflix in their room, fiancee watches Netflix on the Nexus 7.

We're streaming video all over the damn place every day.

We don't have a cable subscription. HD Antenna + Netflix/Internet is all we need.

And you base this conclusion on which figures? I live in a country with close to the best infrastructure in the world and I don't know anybody who watched multiple simultaneous streams in their household. And I'm an IT profesional, my wife makes movies, so our friends/colleagues certainly are tech minded.

Yeah, everybody torrents... I guess that's the big ticket?

I watch the football games on the living room TV over internet, kids watch Netflix in their room, fiancee watches Netflix on the Nexus 7.

We're streaming video all over the damn place every day.

We don't have a cable subscription. HD Antenna + Netflix/Internet is all we need.

The part most people seem to forget is that all those cable channels consume bandwidth too. Now, sure the data is being sent (on cable) regardless of whether they are being watched or not, but the fact is that for the discussion it should be included in the gross bandwidth used by people in a household.

And you base this conclusion on which figures? I live in a country with close to the best infrastructure in the world and I don't know anybody who watched multiple simultaneous streams in their household. And I'm an IT profesional, my wife makes movies, so our friends/colleagues certainly are tech minded.

Yeah, everybody torrents... I guess that's the big ticket?

I watch the football games on the living room TV over internet, kids watch Netflix in their room, fiancee watches Netflix on the Nexus 7.

We're streaming video all over the damn place every day.

We don't have a cable subscription. HD Antenna + Netflix/Internet is all we need.

The part most people seem to forget is that all those cable channels consume bandwidth too. Now, sure the data is being sent (on cable) regardless of whether they are being watched or not, but the fact is that for the discussion it should be included in the gross bandwidth used by people in a household.

I didn't even buy the wireless router I'm using, it came free with the Internet hookup. As for the speed, my laptop came with N, like every other laptop sold in the last 2 years.

I love how you keep using YOURSELF as an example of average consumers.

I'm not saying I'm average, but the service I bought is readily available where I live. As more and more people use streaming services like Netflix the popularity of such offerings will go up.

I know lots of people that download all the TV series/movies they watch. Streaming puts higher demands on bandwidth than downloading, particularly if you want to do other things at the same time without interference.

The availability of higher bandwidth will, over time, lead to that bandwidth being utilized by more and more people. I can get 100Mbit for $10 more per month, I didn't bother because I'm not even sure how that would benefit me right now, but it was tempting to bump up to 250mbit as its not that much more expensive and bound to be awesome. Maybe if I had a house full of media consuming teenagers.

Not everyone is going to utilize more than 10, or 20 Mbit internet connections, but you're only justifying your own circumstances if you think people can't, or that only outliers will.

Not everyone is going to utilize more than 10, or 20 Mbit internet connections, but you're only justifying your own circumstances if you think people can't, or that only outliers will.

Exactly. Cost is irreverent. The majority of the world is now urbanized, and becoming increasingly so. As populations continue to increase in density, bandwidth will go up. One only need look at any emerging economy, their broadband speeds keep increasing. So, this luddite talk by a couple people is rather absurd.

I also can't believe how slow this all develops. 20+ Mbit has been cheaper than €30 in my country for the last 8 years. 8 years later this gets you only two or three times higher speeds.

Thank you for fully agreeing with EH2 and me and making our point

The reason is demand. If demand was higher we would have glass everywhere. Ihat we don't is telling us something... the technology for faster speeds is to expensive to be commercially worthwhile.

And once again I have to shake my head on why saying the average user currently doesn't need much higher speeds is somehow revoking my tech credits.

I have a HUGE shocker for you. Did you notice that the CPU lifecycle (especially for businesses, but also for consumers) has lengthened considerably? Seems the world works a bitdifferent than you thought... there is an end to marginal gains, there needs to be a valid use case or else people will stop paying. A lower price makes the treshold much lower, thats for sure. And yeah for the same money faster is better, nobody is denying that.

Read what I say instead of putting words in my mouth. If you want to attack me that the use-case for average users is crystal clear, go ahead. In fact the netflix case clearly shows that the usecase in the USA is much better than in Europe where pay per view services just don't seem to be abel to take of. But don't try to pin things on me I never said.

Plus, a part of my original claims was US specific regarding internet connection speeds. The US is different than other parts of the world, for many reasons. Geography and politics/business are two.

and even here we have so far given a grand total of ONE application that would need more bandwidth. I never said 10Mb was enough for everyone. I said would trickle up...specidally because of streaming multiple video streams. And yet...how much is needed? Say 3 streams at 8.5Mbs each? So 30Mb would get you 3 simulaneous 1080p, 5.1 sound. As I have said, video was/is the last of the "big obvious" use cases for CPU/HDD/bandwidth/etc. Once that is fully satisfied you have a lot harder time listing other obvious use cases. And that one (video) has been known for a long time. Easy to point out. Now...it has to be things like 4k video or 8k video. Or other more niche applications.

And really--we have had 3 video streams going at once in the house (on a 10Mb line) and no one complained or seemed to even notice.

I didn't even buy the wireless router I'm using, it came free with the Internet hookup. As for the speed, my laptop came with N, like every other laptop sold in the last 2 years.

I love how you keep using YOURSELF as an example of average consumers.

I'm not saying I'm average, but the service I bought is readily available where I live. As more and more people use streaming services like Netflix the popularity of such offerings will go up.

I know lots of people that download all the TV series/movies they watch. Streaming puts higher demands on bandwidth than downloading, particularly if you want to do other things at the same time without interference.

The availability of higher bandwidth will, over time, lead to that bandwidth being utilized by more and more people. I can get 100Mbit for $10 more per month, I didn't bother because I'm not even sure how that would benefit me right now, but it was tempting to bump up to 250mbit as its not that much more expensive and bound to be awesome. Maybe if I had a house full of media consuming teenagers.

Not everyone is going to utilize more than 10, or 20 Mbit internet connections, but you're only justifying your own circumstances if you think people can't, or that only outliers will.

of course outliers exist. I clearly said so in the past. and they actually help drive it for everyone else.

And here is the thing--even you couldn't justify to yourself to get double the bandwidth for only $10 more per month (what is that--25% extra?). And here is the thing--you admit you are nothing like the normal consumer, way higher demands and expectations. So if you couldn't justify it, how would normal consumers?

Not everyone is going to utilize more than 10, or 20 Mbit internet connections, but you're only justifying your own circumstances if you think people can't, or that only outliers will.

Exactly. Cost is irreverent. The majority of the world is now urbanized, and becoming increasingly so. As populations continue to increase in density, bandwidth will go up. One only need look at any emerging economy, their broadband speeds keep increasing. So, this luddite talk by a couple people is rather absurd.

Not as absurd as the polyanna's who think consumers have infinite demands and want to ignore the last couple of decades and teh incredible shift over the last 5-8 years.